Martin Brundle warns of ‘wild’ start to F1 2026 season

Formula 1 could be braced for a “slightly wild” start to 2026 as drivers grapple with battery harvesting, boost management and inevitable reliability gremlins.

That’s the opinion of former F1 driver Martin Brundle as the sport introduces a new engine formula that runs on a 50/50 between electrical and combustion power.

Martin Brundle expects unpredictable opening to F1 2026

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It is, he rightly says, one of the “biggest ever” changes in Formula 1 as there will also be new cars on the grid.

The F1 2026 season begins in Melbourne this Friday with FP1 for the Australian Grand Prix.

Although most teams have spent nine days on track, excluding shakedown and filming days, becoming familiar with the new machines and their power units, Melbourne could be a huge wake-up call.

The power units will be turned up, and for the first time for some teams, the drivers will need to optimise their time in boost mode and harvest the battery to have the necessary power for it during qualifying, and in the grand prix, they’ll have to balance boost and overtake modes.

And that’s on top of activating the movable front and rear wing to gain extra speed into the corners and down the straights.

It is going to be a huge learning curve.

While stopping short of calling it the carnage some drivers are predicting, the nine-time podium finisher believes it could be a ‘slightly wild’ start to the season as the drivers get on top of all the new aspects.

That they’ll have to do so at the power-hungry Albert Park circuit only adds to the drama.

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“It’s a dramatic change, the biggest ever in Formula 1, and we’re right at the very beginning of it,” Brundle told Sky F1.

“Teams have got to find ways of replenishing the battery and for it to not dominate the lap so much, but I think they’ll quite quickly do that and migrate together in terms of how they want to charge and use their power.

“But, in the beginning, it’s going to be slightly wild.

“We’re going to get unreliability as well, much more than we’ve seen in the last few years, when the last hybrid engines became bulletproof, really, and so did the cars.

“I think you’ll not think you have won a grand prix until you literally see the chequered flag.

“We’re going to see a lot of variability but we’re in a massively better place than we were in 2014 when the hybrid engines first came in because only Mercedes got it right then and everybody else was floundering around.

“This is much closer.”

The teams go into the new season with huge questions hanging over the pecking order although the general consensus seems to be that Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren are leading the way with Aston Martin and Cadillac at the back.

But with big gains to be found with the all-new cars, Brundle reckons there’ll be a lot of movement on the list.

“It’s going to be an incredibly changeable year,” said the Briton.

“I see teams leapfrogging each other. There’s not going to be, like, little gains with an upgrade here and there, we’re going to see packages coming along all year, particularly in the first half of the year, where teams start leapfrogging when they really find a chunk of the time.”

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